Student response and structuring your guitar teaching

Whilst a very academic guitar player may love music theory, another student may find it impossibly complicated and demoralising.

One student may like nothing more than working on technique, whereas another may find it mind-numbing.

Good guitar teaching is nuanced

As should be clear, good guitar tuition is not a one-size-fits-all process. One-to-one guitar lessons should be tailored to the individual’s needs, interests, level of skill and academic ability.

It will make sense to teach some things early on to some guitar students, but much later on when it comes to others.

Some areas of study may need to be revisited more than once.

Some may need to be introduced in stages whilst interspersed with other material.

If we try to apply a rigid program of guitar teaching to all your students, we’re destined for failure in many cases.

Sometimes the order does matter

In the Be A Guitar Teacher course I outline certain specific areas of of teaching guitar where the order does matter. But even then we need to be adaptable and not push on ruthlessly without taking other factors into consideration.

Conclusion

The question ‘what order should guitar teachers teach things in?’ has a different answer depending on which of your guitar students you are teaching.

Recognising the individuality of our guitar students does not mean that we shouldn’t have well-defined programs of study.

It would make a lot of sense to have a series of alternate picking exercises that goes from the most basic approach, such as picking on a single string, right through to an advanced exercise that’s packed with string skips.

The same is true for having a program that guides guitar students through the essentials of music theory. A well laid out series of lessons that guides your guitar students through the basics of rhythm and chord work, for example.

This sort of structuring is both good and desirable. Just be flexible and discerning when it comes to actually delivering the material to students.